JCAHO Changes Recommendation After Evidence Found to Support Recommendation

Oakbrook Terrace, IL – During a recent Joint Commission Board meeting, it was discovered that the recommendation that Physician white coats be laundered daily actually may reduce nosocomial infections by as much as 0.002%. “This was a devastating discovery,” said Florence Dayengale RN, BSN, BLS, ACLS, PALS, OPP, GED, Vice President of JCAHO. “We immediately eliminated the recommendation. We have a 65 year history of arbitrary rules without any evidence to support them. Today is not the day that changes.”

“While preparing for an upcoming site visit, I was reviewing the JCAHO regulations and looking for any with actual literature above Level 7 Evidence (Amateur Opinion) and after a mere 37 hours of searching, I was shocked to find a recommendation with a shred of support,” chief Anesthesia resident Richard Van Winkle posted to his Facebook account Wednesday. “I managed to do all the research on breaks during a single OBGYN hysterectomy. Apparently a Serbian hospital did a study and found that washing white coats daily reduced infection rates after total colectomies by 1 infection per 50,000 and almost hit a significant p value.”

Ms. Dayengale vowed that JCAHO has learned form their mistake and vows that “such an egregious mistake will never happen again. We will continue to thoroughly review the literature to ensure that our recommendations live up to the high standard of random baseless decisions the world has come to expect from us.”